Daily Archives: July 23, 2017

Obscure and benign Place Léon Blum in 2017; Known as Place Voltaire during the Paris Occupation

June 14, 1940 in the early hours of the morning: One lone German soldier entered Parisfrom the east and crossed Place Voltaire. Not a single shot was fired. Paris fell into enemy hands during WWII without a single bit of resistance. The “new” French government had already hightailed it south to Vichy, France. Philippe Pétain, a WWI hero himself from the battle of Verdun in 1916, and now eighty-four years old, became vice-premier to Paul Reynaud, France’s current Prime Minister, to bolster national morale. And early on in June, 1940, with German troops overrunning the country, he (Philippe Pétain) was put in charge. He (Pétain) supported collaboration with the Germans, the latter of whom occupied Paris and most of Northern France. Reynaud was vehemently opposed to the German occupation. Soon Reynaud was placed under arrest by Philippe Pétain’s crew of criminal cohorts and imprisoned in a German POW camp for the remainder of the war. Pierre Laval, in a matter of days, became France’s 120th prime minister.

The German 18th Army soon followed that lone soldier into Paris by way of Place Voltaire. And the occupation of Paris in the second World War began.

Bus stop at Place Léon Blum, previously Voltaire, June 2017

June 14, 1940 Sometime later that morning, in his study at his home at 18 Rue Weber, Doctor Thierry de Martel took his own life. He had written to William Bullitt, the American Ambassador: “I made you the promise that I wouldn’t leave Paris. I didn’t say whether I would stay in Paris alive or dead.” He had already lost his only son in WWI , a costly war itself in a long line of costly wars between the Germans and the French. Dr. Martel killed himself with a syringe of strychnine. He was best friend and colleague to the American, Sumner Jackson, Chief of Surgery at the American Hospital in Paris. He was also France’s leading neurosurgeon.

Machine Guns were placed at all 12 avenues converging at Place de E’toile surrounding theArc de Triomphe. Additionally, four cannons were placed at each of the main 4 arteries: Avenues Foch, Victor Hugo, Champs-Élysées, and Marceau.

Imagine machine guns installed by the enemy, pointed out from all points of this French icon of freedom and liberty, along with the national flag of the occupiers billowing overhead.

June 14, 1940 0800 hours, The German Army set up its first Paris HQ at the Hotel Crillonoverlooking Place de la Concorde.Simultaneously, a German flag was soon placed over the Arc de Triomphe. General Otto von Stülpnagel, German Wehrmacht (Army) was the Wehrmacht’s new military commandant of Paris.

Place de La Concorde, 2017

Ritz Hotel

The Ritz Hotel, Place Vendôme, Paris 2017

This was the first chosen lunch spot for the German Ambassador to Paris, Otto Abetz. The Ritz was a popular spot for the Nazi command and SS to eat, board, and party. It was also frequented by the French elite collaborators. One such controversial character, Coco Chanel, who certainly did not go hungry during the war, lived in room 227-228 of the Ritz and was a client of Attorney René de Chambrun, (Pierre Laval’s son-in-law). Madame Ritz herself lived in 266-268. French Actress Arletty, born Leonie Bathiat, resided at the Ritz with her Luftwaffe officer lover Hans-Jürgen Soehring. Arletty was also a very close friend of Josée Laval, daughter of the Prime Minister and notorious collaborator, Pierre Laval. Arletty died at the robust age of 94 years old in 1992. Arletty’s famous line in the war was: “My heart is French but my ass is International.” Unbelievably, the controversy still continues today whether or not she collaborated. But I would say the fact that she was sleeping with the enemy (literally), spoke loudly three things. One-it did not help her cause of innocence. And two-if indeed she was sleeping with the enemy, who better to work for the resistance? Yet, she chose to do nothing in the defense of her fellow French men and women who themselves were starving literally, and as well-being shipped off to concentration camps to die for either being Jewish and/or for fighting for their country. And three-she consorted with Josée Laval Chambrun, a known collaborator living the high life in occupied Paris with her father and her husband, everything at her beck and call, while other Parisiennes were queuing for literally hours on end for a few pieces of bread and cheese.

June 22, 1940, 1836 hours, the German/French armistice was signed in a clearing in the forest near Compiègne France. Representing both the discombobulated French Government and Philippe Pétain, was French General Charles Huntziger and for the Germans, Col. Gen. Wilhelm Keitel. Additionally the other “plenipotentiaries” of the French Government present were: Ambassador Noel, Rear Admiral Maurice R. LeLuc, Army Corps General Georges Parisot, and Air Force General Jean-Marie Joseph Bergeret. Hitler and his main entourage of dirty rotten scoundrels were also present, to include Goring, Brauchitsch, Raeder, Hess, and Ribbentrop.

The site in the clearing where the original wagon car of the Armistice was located. The Museum of the Armistice.The Glade of the Armistice, Compiègne France. The Museum of the Armistice.

“Hitler dictates that the French capitulation take place at Compiègne, a forest north of Paris. This is the same spot where twenty-two years earlier the Germans had signed the Armistice ending World War I in front of French General Marshal Foch. Hitler intended to disgrace the French and avenge the German defeat. (Indeed he chose to sit in the very same seat used by his nemesis Marshal Foch in 1918.) To further deepen the humiliation, he ordered that the signing ceremony take place in the same railroad car that hosted the earlier surrender. Under the terms of this Armistice, two-thirds of France is to be occupied by the Germans. The French army is to be disbanded. In addition, France must bear the cost of the German invasion.” (Eyewitness to History: Account of American journalist William Shirer)

An exact replica of the original Marshal Foch wagon used at both the armistice of 1918 and the armistice of 1940. The original wagon was promptly destroyed after the 1940 armistice on Hitler’s order.

A replica of the original Marshal Foch wagon inside the Museum of the Armistice.

Subsequently, and in quick order, the French 3rd Republic Government was officially and illegally dissolved. Philippe Pétain became Marshal Pétain of France and established the French Capital in Vichy, France, at this point still a part of the “Unoccupied Zone.” This government of appeasers and collaborators became known as the Vichy State.

June 23, 1940, 6:35 am The morning following the signing of the armistice, Hitler made his one and only visit to occupied Paris during the war. His motorcade came from Le Bourget Airfield into Paris and made its way around the Arc de Triomphe twice, down Avenue Foch, south along the Seine and back out of Paris.

July 11, 1940 Pierre Laval became the 120th Prime Minister of France and “rapidly fostered excellent relations with the Nazi faction in his country.” (“Avenue of Spies,” Alex Kershaw, Page 43) Pierre’s only child, Josée Laval, joined her father in the conspiracy against her own country, and in support of his part in transporting literally thousands of Jews, men, women, and children, as well as resistors to their deaths in German concentration camps.

July, 1940German Embassy is established at Hôtel de Beauharnais at 78 Rue de Lille

Halle at 78 Rue de Lille, June, 2017.

-Otto Abetz is the German Ambassador (oxymoron perhaps) to Paris and he is married to Suzanne, a French woman. Otto Abetz, at the bequest of General Albert de Chambrun, a member of the board of directors for the American Hospital of Paris, helped supply the American Hospital with necessary food and other items needed to keep the hospital in operation. In this way, both Abetz and the de Chambruns unwittingly helped Sumner Jackson in his cause to smuggle downed allied pilots/soldiers to freedom via the hospital. (See my notes on General de Chambrun at the end of this timeline.) Abetz himself was a die in the wool Nazi whose seemingly kind deeds in aiding the American Hospital with food and supplies was only done as a result of his collaborator relationships with the de Chambruns and Lavals, a relationship deemed very necessary by the Nazi regime for the success of the ongoing occupation of Paris and the round-up of Jews. This was indeed one of the rare times that collaboration benefitted the French Resistance, albeit unwitting on the part of the collaborators and the Nazis.

July-August, 1940Kammandantur, German HQ Neuilly-sur-Seine – established itself directly across from the American Hospital.

The American Hospital of Paris in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine – France, 1906-Present; American Surgeon, Sumner Jackson practiced here from 1925 until his capture in 1944. His office was on the 4th floor.

Avenue Foch was (and still is) lined with wealthy houses or mansions belonging to some of France’s elite upper class. It was and is one of the four main arteries stemming from the Arc de Triomphe. During the occupation, many of those residents had fled the city for safety in the United States or across the channel in the United Kingdom. This left their homes at the mercy of the merciless. The Nazis quickly and notably confiscated these homes for either their own living quarters and/or offices, but also for the much darker purpose of interrogating and torturing those in the resistance. Avenue Foch was known by many names among the Parisiennes. Even before the war, it was known as Avenue Bois (woods) since it is anchored on its Southwest end by Bois de Boulogne. During the occupation, it quickly became knows as either Avenue Boch (Boch was a derogatory nickname for the German occupiers) and as the Avenue of the Gestapo. Avenue Foch literally, was named for Marshal Foch, the French General who had taken the German surrender in the clearing outside of Compiègne in 1918.

19 Avenue De Foch once belonging to Baron Edmond De Rothschild, now occupied by Helmut Knochen (aka Mr. Bones), SS-Schutzstaffel, Geheime Statspolizei, (Secret State Police: Gestapo) and his men. Knochen had a reputation of viciousness and brutality. He was previously known for the “Venlo Incident.”

19 Avenue Foch, June 2017 Office and residences of Helmut Knochen, commander of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and Sicherheitsdienst in Paris during the Nazi occupation.

31 Avenue Foch, (former home of Madame Alexandrine de Rothschild, a family of bankers) now occupied by Theodore Dannecker, Head of the Gestapo’s Jewish Affairs, colleague to Knochen. Dannecker had a vicious hate for the Jews. From this address, Dannecker would heartlessly send 1000’s of French men and women to the death camp at Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

**A note about the Rothschild family: The Rothschilds are a wealthy European family of bankers dating back to the 16th century. As far as the war is concerned, Philippe de Rothschild (unknown relationship to the Rothschilds who resided at Avenue de Foch, but likely related) was fighting the Germans with the Free French. The Gestapo had arrested his estranged wife (who ironically was not Jewish at all and was now separated from her Jewish husband.) In 1941 she was deported to Ravensbrück concentration campwhere she reportedly was thrown into the “oven alive,” after being beaten repeatedly —the cause of her death remains unresolved-Elizabeth Pelletier de Chamber-was the only known member of the Rothschild family, albeit married into that family, to die in the Holocaust. She wasn’t Jewish. But she bore the name Rothschild.

31 Avenue Foch, Also in June, 1942, Adolf Eichmann, SS-Obersturmbannführer, author of “The Final Solution,” the Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jewish nation, arrived in Paris and set up office at this same location.

88 Avenue Foch, previously owned by Louis Renault (the car manufacturer) now used by Knochen’s men.

The Good Guys on Avenue Foch

11 Avenue Foch, Ground floor; One of the more modest homes on Avenue Foch was inhabited by American Sumner Jackson, his Swiss French wife Charlotte (“Toquette”) and their son Phillip Jackson.

11 Avenue Foch, June 2017

Sumner Jackson was the chief of surgery at the American Hospital of Paris at Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb just west of Paris.Sumner was already a decorated WWI hero from the 1st world war. He had worked in primitive tents set up as hospitals at the front lines in the worst of conditions. Now, once again, faced with major involvement in yet another world war, both times-amazingly enough, even before his own country had joined the effort, he was smuggling downed allied pilots and other resistors through the hospital to freedom and back into the fight. His wife Toquette was an active French Resistor, recruited by Frances Deloche de Noyelle, into the network “Goélette. Their home at number 11 was a “drop box” for the resistance. Toquette was code name Colombiers. This is how she fought the war. And her husband Sumner, did so through the hospital. And their only child Phillip was also involved.

Another note on Dr. Jackson: According to all who knew him, he was one of the most humble men among his profession. Quiet and reserved, he never liked being in the spotlight. But in view of his gigantic contribution to the freedoms of his countrymen in two World Wars, it would seem fitting to behold a grand statue matching such grand stature as his. On the other hand it comes as little surprise that the man who embodied so much humility is memorialized in no grand way, but rather with an obscure small plaque at the American Hospital in Paris, which itself in only a few lines, doesn’t begin to tell the story of his life and generosity. Furthermore, even his name and that of his son’s are spelled wrong on the memorial wall at the Camp de Royalieu internment museum in Compiègne. I think he would be amused by this fact and not one bit offended. I am thankful for literary giants like Alex Kershaw and Charles Glass who have so eloquently shared his story with the likes of me, one soul cast among millions, whose freedom has been largely gained by his great loss.

55 Avenue Foch, home of Pierre Wertheimer who fled to the United States prior to the occupation.

55 Avenue Foch, June 2017

Wertheimer was 80% holder of Chanel Perfume dynasty. He put his business and holdings into the hands of an Aryan business partner, prior to leaving Paris. Coco Chanel did all she could to exploit the Nazi occupation in her favor by attempting to strip the Wertheimer brothers of their partnership. She was not successful in that endeavor, thanks to Wertheimer’s prudent decision prior to leaving Paris. But suffice to say, she was, for the remainder of the war, a collaborator in any way that benefited Coco Chanel.58 Avenue Foch, Banker Nelson D. Jay, President of the American Hospital board of Governors. He also fled Paris prior to the occupation.

75 Avenue Foch Alfred Lindon who also fled to safety prior to the occupation, left 63 privately owned precious paintings at the Chase Bank in Paris. It’s uncertain what became of those paintings. The Nazis both looted famous and precious works of art as well as destroyed them.

May 26 – June 4 1940 The Battle of Dunkirk

September 1940 Battle of Britain (Recommended Reading by Alex Kershaw: “The Few.”) Kershaw’s book is about “a few” American pilots who smuggled themselves into Europe and then to England, violating FDR’s neutrality law forbidding Americans to fight in the European conflict. These pilots joined the RAF in spite of that. They saw a need and recognized they had something to offer, their ability to fly airplanes, in this gallant fight for freedom. Some of them were crop dusters.

September 7, 1940 – May 1941 German Blitzkrieg of London.

September 27, 1940 the Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin.

October 24, 1940Marshal Philippe Pétain and Hitler met at Montorie-sr-le-Loir. “And as London suffered the worst of the Blitz (Savage bombing of London which left 1000’s dead and even more homeless) Pétain was photographed shaking Hitler’s hand.” Pétain’s declaration: “It is with honor, and in order to maintain French unity, a unity which has lasted ten centuries, and in the framework of the constructive activity of the new European order, that today I am embarking on the path of collaboration.” (Alex Kershaw’s “Avenue of Spies,” page 44)

December 23, 1940Jacques Bonsergent was the 1st occupied Parisienne to face Nazi firing squad. His crime? Jostling a soldier at Gare-Saint-Lazare. (a metro train station)The Germans were definitely now making a statement about who was in control of the City of Lights.

June 22 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The invasion broke the non-aggression pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. Up until this point, Russia (Stalin) was fighting in conquest of Europe along side Hitler. Indeed in their pre-war strategizing, Hitler and Stalin had already decided how they would divvy up conquered Europe between them. Now, boom, just like that, this hellacious, volatile, hot bed of human abuse, cruel and vehement Soviet Union, became an Ally to the UK, rather than an enemy. But they were far from “friends.” At the time it was a stroke of luck. Heaven knows how Britain (and later) the US and their allies would have been frightfully pressed fighting on so many fronts, and perhaps the war lost, had Hitler not reneged on his pact with the Russians. But yet, this newfound alliance with Russia…..was rather like consorting with the devil. It was at the time a necessary evil.

May 14, 1941, Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 40 were called to present themselves to the Paris police. They were summoned using a green postcard, for which this wave of arrests became known as the “billet vert.” More than 5,000 Paris Jews were taken into custody in this first wave of arrests. After their arrest, the prisoners were sent to the detention camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. Many of these Jews were later released only to be arrested again (and deported) in 1942.

August 20, 1941about 3,000 Jews were arrested in a sudden operation, undertaken by a joint French-German collaboration. These arrests were enabled by detailed lists of names prepared by French police officers. Many of these Jews were later released only to be arrested again (and deported) in 1942.

August 21,1941At Barbes Rochechouart metro station,The first German soldier is killed in occupied Paris by 22-year-old member of the French Resis­tance named Georges Pierre. Begin­ning on August

Inside the station at Barbes Rochechouart metro, 2017..Katie Ann at the entrance of Barbes Rochechouart metro station, June 2017

28 and over the next seve­ral days, French judges sent eleven inno­cent French­men to their deaths as a response to this incident. French Vichy Marshal Pétain actually offered for the Vichy to have them publicly guillotined, but the Germans decided to do it in private in an effort to avoid further reprisals.

Fall, 1941 Hundreds of Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Compiègne internment camp, north-east of Paris. In the months that followed they were also released.

October – December 1941 The French Resistance steps up and continues it’s resistance activities in Paris with multiple saboteur activities.

November – December 1941 Knochen is removed from Paris by the Prussian Wehrmacht General Otto von Stülpnagel, the military commandant of Paris ostensibly for his (Knochen’s) orchestration of the Jewish synagogue bombings and the ensuing chaos.

December 7, 1941Pearl Harboris attacked by the Japanese, waking a sleeping Giant. The United states is now drawn inescapably into the war, both theaters, Pacific and European.

December 18, 1941340 Americans living in Paris are interned in a German prison facility in Compiègne, France.

December 1941 American Sylvia Beach’s book shop, “Shakespeare and Company” at 12 rue de l’Odéon,was closed by the Nazis. It boasted the company of “great expat writers of the time—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound—including some of the century’s most compelling female voices: Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Janet Flanner, Kay Boyle, and Mina Loy.” (Shakespeareandcompany.com)

Original location of Sylvia Beach’s book store Shakespeare and Company at 12 Rue de l’Odéon.. Today it is a clothing boutique. If walls could talk.Plaque which is today, above the address at Rue de l’Odéon, honoring Sylvia Beach’s publishing of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” He couldn’t get it published in America, so he brought it to Sylvia in Paris.

French author André Chamson said that Beach “did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined.” Sylvia was arrested and held at the Garden d’Acclimation at the Bois de Boulognebefore being sent to an internment camp in Vittel France. She was transported there in September, 1942 and released in March, 1943.

The current “Shakespeare and Company” bookstore located at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, opened in 1951 by George Whitman and given its new name in 1964 in honor of Sylvia Beach.Le Jardin d’Acclimatation in Bois de Boulogne, Paris, 2017; Sylvia Beach was interned here by the Nazis before being sent to Vittel, France.

1941-1944 The Germans (with the help of Vichy French Government) had established four primary internment camps just outside of Paris where they interned Americans, political dissidents, resisters, and Jews. They were typically housed according to their categorical label. The Jews, unless freed for some obscure reason from the internment camp, were typically always transferred from the camp to concentration camps where survival chances were even slimmer. Those 4 camps were: Compiègne, 50 miles NE of Paris; Drancy La Cité de la Muette (Operated by the Vichy until January, 1943) near St. Denis just north of Paris centre; and Pithiviers Beaune-la-Rolande; and Fresnes.This is a great website for the Drancy Internment Camp: http://drancy.memorialdelashoah.org/en/the-drancy-memorial/presentation/the-history-of-the-cite-de-la-muette.html

Gallery for Additional photos Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Phillip and Sumner Jacksons’ names inscribed on a memorial wall at Camp de Royalieu, 2017, along wth every other individual imprisoned there. Notice the misspelling of their names.

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu, Internment Camp Museum in 2017. Site of internment camp in Compiègne during the occupation.

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

Camp de Royalieu Compiègne, France

March 27, 1942The first 1000 Jews are deported from French soil at Compiègne camp, Sector C, to Auschwitz Birkenau.

May 5, 1942 Knochen returns to Paris donning the German Iron Cross. He was brought back to Paris by his equally ruthless boss, Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), SS Standartenführer -SS Commander of Gestapo and Criminal Police, KRIPO, nicknamed by Hitler, “The Man with the Iron Heart.”

Simultaneously with Knochen’s reinstatement to Paris, his nemesis, General Otto von Stülpnagel, was removed from his Wehrmacht military command in Paris and replaced by his cousin, General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel.

Spring 1942 SS General Karl Otberg and Knochen are fully in charge of Paris Gestapo. Otberg is known as “The Butcher of Paris,” (See “Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation,” by Charles Glass.)

June, 1942These Nazi commanders and the Vichy French government begin plotting the deportation of the Jews from Paris. They initially propagated “A Jewish State in the East,” but assuredly sent them to their deaths. Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of Vichy France: “It would be no dishonor to me if I were to send the countless number of foreign Jews who are in France to this state one day.”

July 4, 1942 Danneker and Knochen in a meeting, decide that René Bousquet, Secretary General to the Vichy and his gendarmes would be responsible for gathering the Jews up, thinking perhaps it would go better for their own countrymen to oust them from their homes, rip them from their children, transport them to internment camps, and then deport them to concentration camps. Their sick and distorted thinking: Better the French do this to the French, then the Germans undertake it and suffer even more resistance.

July 4, 1942In a meeting later that same day between Danneker and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, Laval actually recommends to have the children be deported along with their families. Danneker was thrilled with this unprompted offer from Prime Minister Laval.

July 16 – July 17, 1942

Vel’ d’Hiv Monument, Quai de Grenelle, “The Great Round Up,” 2017.

The Grand Raffle (The Great Round Up)
In a relatively short amount of time, 13,152 Jews, including more than 4000 children were herded into the Vélodrome d’hiver (Bicycle Sports Stadium) located at Blvd de Grenelle and Rue Nélaton(Memorial located at the wall near the subway station Bir-Hakeim very near the Eiffel Tower.) The Vélodrome d’hiver was an indoor bicycle track. The Jews were held there in deplorable conditions-no plumbing, scraps of bread for food, with little water- for an average of five days before being deported to concentration camps, most of them to Auschwitz Birkenau. Less than 4% of this group of Jews returned from the concentration camps, and none of those children. The youngest recorded age in the Great Roundup was 18 months old. The French catholic church made a rather belated appeal to Pierre Laval to spare the children. His blunt, cruel reply: “The children must go.” By the end of July, over 14,000 Jews had been deported. Not until 1995 did the French President at that time Jacques Chirac, admit and apologize for French complicity in this tragedy.

At the Bir-Hakeim Metro station is the Grand Raffel Memorial and park (The Great Roundup) 16-17 July 1942. Located at Blvd de Grenelle and the rue Nélaton in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, walking distance to the Eiffel Tower.

By 1942 if not earlier in the occupation, you could no longer tell the difference between a Vichy government collaborator and a Nazi.

September 24, 1942 Sumner Jackson was arrested, not for his yet undetected resistance activities smuggling the allied pilots out of Paris, but rather because he was an American. He was interned at Compiègne-Royallieu, Frontstalag 122B Sector B. Nearby in Sector C was the internment barracks for Jewish prisoners.

October, 1942General de Chambrun secures Jackson’s release from Compiègne. Sumner returns to his clandestine activities as well as his medical profession at the American Hospital in Paris. His wife and son are both relieved. The Jacksons were very secretive. (Who wasn’t?) There was no trusting de Chambrun with knowledge of their resistance activities. He (de Chambrun) was too aligned with the Vichy government. As were de Chambrun’s son and daughter-in-law, René and Josée (Laval) de Chambrun.

November 1942 Allied Forces invade Vichy controlled Northern Africa.

November 11, 1942The Germans occupy Vichy, France. Nowthe delusional world of freedom that the collaborating Vichy government had been enjoying up to this point, was clearly hampered.

January 1943,The French Vichy, now at an all time moral low, established their own para military force to be used against their own country men, called the Milice. It was headed up by Joseph Darnand. Darnand, a deportation expert himself, was the organization’s de facto leader. He, in fact, was a puppet of the true leader of the vicious Milice, Pierre Laval, the French Prime Minister. The Milice was merciless and vicious. The Milice’s most famous victim was Politician Georges Mandel. Mandel was Churchill’s first choice for the voice of the French resistance over Charles de Gualle. But Mandel, a Jew, refused to leave France on the pretense that it would appear he was a coward and that his efforts were best served in France, not England. The Vichy are also now forced to hand over operation of the Drancy Internment Camp completely to the Nazis.

February 2, 1943The Germans were defeated by the Russians at Stalingrad.

September 23, 1943Gestapo sets up yet another HQ and Gestapo torture/interrogation center at 11 Rue des Saussaies in Paris.

1942- August, 1944 The “Nazi Triangle” as it was called (“Avenue of Spies” quote by Alex Kershaw) consisted of a trifecta of torture chambers, these in addition to the torture that went on at the offices on Avenue Foch. These other three were at 5 Rue Mallet-Stevens, 93 Rue Lauriston, and 180 Rue de la Pompe, The address at 180 Rue de la Pompe was mere blocks from Phillip Jackson’s high school at number 106 Rue de la Pompe.

180 Rue de la Pompe was also previously inhabited by Nazi and Knochen’s top informer Comtesse Von Seckendorrff. She later moved her place of residence to the luxurious address of 41 Avenue Foch. Then, 180 Ave de la Pompe was expropriated by the Nazi Berger Group, headed up by Friedrich Berger, veteran of the Abwehr, working for the Gestapo on Avenue Foch. He actually had three equally sadistic women working for him as well in his torture house. They included a set of sisters who were also his mistresses, as well as a female Iranian taxi driver. These women were as lethal and cruel as their boss. The interesting note about 93 Rue Lauriston, is that this torture house was operated by Frenchman Henri Lafont, (born Henri Chamberlin) a notorious and violent gangster sprung from his French prison by Helmut Knochen, to be recruited to work in Nazi’s brutal attack on Paris citizens and her resistors. Lafont, a loser, by every definition, a self-serving ass, and an expert in criminal enterprise and the black market, espoused the perfect resume for the work Helmut Knochen had in mind.

180 Rue de La Pompe, 2017, site of Berger’s Gestapo Torture chamber during the Occupation and just blocks from Phillip Jackson’s school

April 21, 1944The Porte de la Chapelle marshaling yards in Paris were hit by allied bombing. Approximately 600 people were killed and over 30 wounded, as bad a casualty rate as any during they London Blitz. An unfortunate fallout of Allied bombing in WWII was the unintentional injury and deaths of civilians. It’s a painful truth about a painful war.

May 24, 1944The entire Jackson Family, Sumner, Toquette, and their son Phillip are arrested by the French Milice, this time for suspected resistance activities. The family was taken out of Paris, and the men separated from Toquette at the Château des Brosses, near Vichy. This was the French Milice’s main prison.

June 6, 1944 The Allies land in Normandy, France,code name Operation Overlord. The French invasion had begun.

June 10, 1944 “Atrocity followed atrocity as the SS struck back indiscriminately at any community thought to have harbored terrorists. On this day, men belonging to the SS Der Fürher regiment entered the small town of Oradour-sur-Glaneand killed 642 people in one of the most atrocious crimes committed in France; 207 of the victims were children.” (“Avenue of Spies,” Pg. 129 Alex Kershaw)

June 10-11, 1944The Jacksons are moved to the Hôtel du Portugal,the Gestapo’s torture house in Vichy, France located on the Boulevard des Étas-Unis, (United States Blvd.)

July 7, 1944Phillip and his father Sumner were transported to the Camp de Royalieu internment camp at Compiègne where Sumner had been interned before. This time though they were held in a different place, reserved for enemies of the 3rd Reich.

July 15, 1944 Toquette is taken to a prison in Romainville.

July 15, 1944 Phillip and Sumner are deported to a labor concentration camp in Neuengamme, Germany, 10 miles SE of Hamburg.

July 20, 1944 Attempted assassination by Von Stauffenberg of Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair. The attempt fails, but before Stauffenberg is aware of that, he calls General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel in Paris and tells him, he was in fact successful with the assassination, and orders the General to carry out his part of the coup in Paris. Stülpnagel ordered the arrest of 1200 SS and Gestapo men in Paris, including Knochen and Otberg and all their henchmen. “Then came a sound never to be forgotten,” (Alex Kershaw) and that was the sound of Hitler’s menacing voice on a radio in hotels and public places announcing the failed attempt on his life. And just like that the Coup was over. The Wehrmacht Generals in Paris were forced to stand down by the likes of Knochen and Otberg, and the Nazi reign of terror continued. The only reason the German Wehrmacht leaders were not executed was that Knochen and Otberg both agreed this would be too distracting from their task at hand. Given the push of the Allies toward Paris, they felt more than ever, the need to continue to hunt down resistors in Paris and those opposing the Nazi’s horrific goals.

August 10, 1944, A petite 5’3” 23 year old British SOE agent Violette Szabo, (mother of a two-year old girl) is arrested and tortured by the Gestapo at 84 Avenue Foch. She never. gave. up. one. piece. of. information. And I wonder “what would I have done? What would my daughter had done? Szabo ended up at Ravensbrück with Toquette Jackson and a host of other women resistors. Sadly on February 5, 1945 Szabo was executed with two other young women, also SOE agents, Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch.

August 17, 1944 The Bois de Boulogne murder of 35 resistance fighters who walked into a trap and were gunned down by Friedrich Berger and his gang of killers. In a clearing near the fortress in Mt. Valérienoverlooking Bois de Boulogne, there is a site now preserved as a monument to resistant fighters who were shot there.

Grand Cascade Bois de Boulogne, June 2017

August 17, 1944 Pierre Taittinger, who had become President of the Municipal Council of Paris in 1943-1944, meets with von Dietrich von Choltitz, the city’s now German military governor, a Prussian General himself who had been ordered by Hitler, given the onslaught of the Allies landing at Normandy and on their way to liberate Paris, “to crush all attempts at an uprising.” (“Avenue of Spies,” Alex Kershaw, Pg. 162) **After the liberation of Paris, the Drancy internment camp was used to detain suspected collaborators, among them, writer-director Sacha Guitry, opera singer Germaine Lubin as well as Pierre Taittinger.

August 18, 1944 Knochen leaves Paris along with SS general Karl Otberg and all of their loyal Nazi subordinates. Ironically, later that day, Knochen and the Gestapo officers arrived at Vittel for their first retreat destination, the same town where Sylvia Beach had been interned for being an American in Paris.

August 20, 1944 Toquette is moved from the Romainville prison and eventually arrives and is imprisoned at Ravensbrück Germany concentration camp.

August 22, 1944 Hitler orders General von Choltitz, “Paris is to be transformed into a pile of rubble.” Neither General von Choltitz or General Hans Speidel, whose office had received and transmitted Hitler’s order, “had any intention of being remembered by history as the destroyer of Paris.” (“Avenue of Spies,” Alex Kershaw, Pg. 166) Both of them had only recently been posted in Paris.

August 1944 Knochen was demoted to Private by Heinrich Himmler, Supreme Commanding Head of the SS and moved to the Russian front.

August 24, 1944 The Liberation of Paris: The French Resistance at 0900, soon followed by their American Allies of 2nd Armored Division, liberated Paris, France. Later in the evening, both the Tri color French Flag and the Stars and Stripes were raised side by side over the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower, 2017

October 21, 1944Aachen Germany is the first German city to fall into Allied hands. Aachen is a beautiful city to visit and is located a mere 30 to 45 minute drive from our previous home in Schierwaldenrath GE, where we lived for 4 years.

April 21, 1945 Sumner and Phillip along with some 15,000 other Neuengamme inmates were transported to the Baltic port of Lübeck, to be placed on prison ships. They are both suffering from malnutrition, beatings, and exhaustion. They arrived at Lübeck and within a day or so were placed on the prison ship “Thielbek,”crammed into the hold of the ship with the other beaten down, many of them dying, prisoners. Dr. Jackson continued to treat his patients. His son worked with him. They refused to leave the patients in the hold when it was announced that all French-speaking prisoners in the hold could go up to the deck. Michael Hollard, a resistor prisoner on the ship, referred to his friend, Sumner Jackson, as “the devoted American.”

April 25, 1945 Toquette is released from Ravensbrück along with other French female prisoners as a result of the negotiations between the Swedish chairman of the Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, and Heinrich Himmler, Chief of German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior and a leading Nazi responsible for helping to orchestrate the Holocaust. Toquette is literally saved in the 11th hour. She was transported to Malmö, Switzerland and began her long road to convalescence. Of the 550 women departed with her from France on August 15, 1944, she was only one of 17 who survived.
**Toquette Jackson continued to suffer from health issues related to her imprisonment and hard labor the remainder of her life. Sadly she lots her beloved husband in the conflict. She died in 1965-the same year I was born. It is strange to think that partly because of her courage in that war, that in the very year she died, I was born into freedom.

May 3, 1945 Sumner Jackson, along with his son Phillip still on the prison boat, set sail. The prison boats are subsequently shot by fighter pilots of the RAF, not realizing that the allied prisoners are inside. Phillip survives the ordeal. His father does not. Sumner Jackson was seen by another prison floating in the water on a piece of wood. Later he was presumed drowned. Phillip was herded into the city of Neustadtwith the survivors. Many of the prisoners were shot dead by the SS on the shore as they escaped the sinking prison ships. Phillip was fortunate enough to be only one of 50 people out of 2750 on the Thielbek that survived. The next day Neustadt was liberated by the British.
**Phillip Jackson, immediately the day of his liberation, began serving in the British military as a translator. It would be a year before he was reunited with his mother. Phillip Jackson recently died in December, 2016 at his residence at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, France.

Plaque in The American Hospital of Paris memorializing Sumner Jackson.

May 7,1945 At SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender of all of Germany to the Allied forces. The war officially ended on May 8, 1945.

Other Notable Addresses During the Occupation and Why?

85-87 Rue du Baubourg St. Martin, Lévitan, a well known Jewish furniture store was requisitioned in July 1943 for sorting items stolen by the Nazis and intended for Nazi use either in their requisitioned homes and offices in Paris or else to be sent to destinations in Germany.

Pierre La Chaise Cemetery The burial places of André Wang and Georges Dudocks, both members of the resistance.

Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris; Photo taken in February 2013

79 Avenue Victor Hugo: Otto Burearu: A Nazi Office for the censoring of Books, including Shakespeare.

129 Avenue de Malakoff, Salon and home of American Florence Gould, a favorite of Knochen for Thursday afternoon’s soirée. Gould was a French divorcee and dancer who caught the eye of Frank Jay Gould. Her husband spent World War II on the Riviera, but she “quickly returned to Paris, and in no time was cultivating Wehrmacht officers and Gestapo officials,” according to Frederic Spotts’s book, “The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation.”

122 Rue de Provence: One of the most popular wartime brothels, particularly for the Nazis in occupied Paris during the war.

58 Rue de Vaugirard, overlooking Luxembourg Gardens:
Home of General Albert de Chambrun (direct descendent of the Marquis de Lafayette) and his wife Clara Longworth, an American.

58 Rue de Vaugirard, 2017. During the Occupation: Home of General Albert de Chambrun and his wife Clara Longworth de Chambrun, an American.

(Clara’s brother, Nicholas Longworth was married to Alice Roosevelt, only child of Teddy Roosevelt) General de Chambrun had fought, by all accounts gallantly, for his country in WWI. His American wife, Clara, ran the American Library in Paris and kept it open during the occupation. This was both astounding and suspect, considering the Nazi’s book censorship at the time. After all, Sylvia Beach was also an American. Yet, her book shop Shakespeare and Company was shut down by the Nazis, and she was interned at an American internment camp. The de Chambrun’s only child René de Chambrun was collaborator Marshal Pétain’s Godson and lo and behold, married to Josée (Laval) de Chambrun, daughter of Collaboration King himself, Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France. One has a love hate relationship with General Albert and Clara de Chambrun. Chambrun was thought by many to be a collaborator. But he also was instrumental in keeping the American hospital open and out of Nazi hands. He also tried very hard but failed to gain the release of the Jacksons after they were all arrested in May, 1944. On the other hand, he was friends with a brood of French aristocrat who were decidedly collaborators and the enemy who occupied his city. Clara’s biggest crime undoubtedly was her ignorance. Her stubborn defense and adoration of both Pétain and Laval speak volumes about her inability to take her head out of the aristocratic sand where she had it embedded. The de Chambrun’s only child, son René and his wife Josée were even more suspect for their collaboration activities, and in particular Josée. She reveled in high society living and spared no expense indulging that life even during the occupation as she hobnobbed with both the Aryan (Non Jewish) French aristocrats as well as the top brass of the Nazi occupiers. She was her father Pierre Laval’s right hand woman. René de Chambrun was an attorney who represented many questionable characters, the cast of which included Coco Chanel. It should be noted also that if you want to defend this family’s honor, then take into hearty consideration 2 important factors: 1 that while most of Paris was literally dying from starvation or from exposure to the elements, and while other Parisiennes were being tortured and deported, and killed for their resistance activities against the Nazis, this family enjoyed relative calm, plenty of food, and no shortage of parties attended with high-ranking members of the Nazi establishment including the Nazi Ambassador Otto Abetz. And 2 There is nothing, no evidence in the annals of history, revealing this family intervening on behalf of a single Jew being deported to death camps. And why would they? Their beloved Pétain and Laval were instrumental in the support and success of those murders. Yes, when trying to decide if the de Chambruns were collaborators, there is much to consider.

1 Rue de Traktir, (about 100 yards from the Jacksons’ home at 11 Avenue de Foch) Home of Francis Deloche de Noyelle, the young 23-year-old who recruited Toquette Jackson into the French resistance work, the Goélette network, just one circuit under the umbrella of the broader resistance organization, The BCRA (Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operation)

1 Rue de Traktir, 2017. During the occupation, home of Francis Deloche de Noyelle, resistance fighter.

OTHER NOTABLE QUOTES:

“As long as Gestapo is carrying out the will of leadership (Hitler) it is acting legally,” Werner Best, Knochen’s colleague.

“That college is a nest of assassins! It should be torched. The Gestapo is much too soft on these types. I looked into the case of this director and you can rest assured he won’t be released.” Otto Abetz, Nazi Ambassador to Paris during the occupation, Re: A Paris University professor who had refused to hand over names of students thought to have joined the resistance.

“Indignation can move mountains,” Germaine Tillion, Ravensbrûck survivor, on women’s role in the French Resistance.

“Je ne regrette rien.” (I regret nothing,) Toquette Jackson in a statement she made years after the war.

“I want you to know that I never ceased to be in love with Sumner, for whom I had forever a great admiration and respect. He has such big qualities,” Toquette Jackson, in a letter she penned to Summer’s sister after the war.

“We were lucky to still have each other….I was a kid until I was arrested and spent time in a concentration camp, which made me into an adult, but I had no adolescence. I had skipped from child to adult.” Phillip Jackson on losing his father in the war, but surviving with his mother.

“To die is nothing. What is sad is to die without seeing the liberation of the country and the restoration of the Republic,” Georges Mandel, French Jewish politician and leader in the Resistance, just before he was murdered by the French Milice.

“We’ll all be hanged for what the Milice have done. I don’t mind hanging but not with Darnand,” Josée (Laval) de Chambrun to her father, Pierre Laval, with regard to the French Milice and Milice commander Joseph Darnand, and their viciousness as she speculated on what might happen to collaborators after the war.

What happened to the Collaborators?

General Albert and Clara Chambrun were arrested immediately following the liberation of Paris. Essentially their release was only secured by Chambrun’s brother, Pierre Chambrun, who ironically in June, 1940 had been the only one of 84 Parliamentarians who voted against Pétain and the forming of the Vichy government. They were removed from their leadership roles at the American Hospital and the American Library respectively and maintained a low profile for a long time in fear for their safety.

René and José (Laval) Chambrun, assumed false identities and hid with wealthy friends in the country. Later they fled Paris all together until they felt it safe to return. Ironic isn’t it?

Initially on August 17, 1944 just before Paris was liberated, Knochen had both Laval and Pétain arrested and moved to Germany. Ironically, the collaborators finally fell victim to their occupiers for whom they had towed the line at the expense of thousands of French. However, their captivity evolved into somewhat of a hopeful and contrived escape from the new French Government. But, By April, 1945 they were retrieved by the Americans from Germany and turned over to the presiding French Government to stand trial for treason.

At the end of Philippe Pétain’s trial, he was convicted on all charges. The jury sentenced him to death. Due to his advanced age, the Court asked that the sentence not be carried out. General Charles De Gaulle, who was President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic at the end of the war, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment due to Pétain’s age and his military contributions in World War I. After his conviction, the Court stripped Pétain of all military ranks and honors save for the one distinction of Marshal of France.

Pierre Laval was tried and was found guilty and killed by firing squad in October, 1945.

Henri Lafont was picked up on a farm just outside of Paris. On December 27, 1944 in a person cell, he told his lawyer, “I don’t regret a thing.I’ve had four years surrounded by orchids, dahlias, and Bentleys-that was worth it. I have lived ten lives so I can afford to lose one. Tell my son not to go to night clubs…” He was killed by firing squad that same day with a cigarette between his lips as usual.

Joseph Darnand, head of the French Milice was killed by firing squad for treason.

René Bousquet was head of the French Police during the Paris occupation and responsible for helping to orchestrate the Great Roundup of Jews on July 16, 1942, the vast majority of which never returned from Auschwitz concentration camp. Bousquet was (surprise surprise) an old friend of René de Chambrun. He somehow escaped justice in the immediate aftermath of the war. Bousquet had many other high-ranking friends including François Mitterrand who was a member of the Vichy government himself and later President of France, (Socialist party,) from 1981-1995. Many collaborators did indeed escape justice. But according to Alex Kershaw’s report in “Avenue of Spies,” pg. 222, regarding Bousquet, “He was sensationally killed in 1993, just weeks before he was finally to be tried for war crimes, by a 51-year-old man who then pled not guilty to murder, arguing that Bousquet had so obviously deserved to die.”

CONCLUSION:

By the end of the war, 3.5 million denunciations had been made by the French against the French. (“Les Parisiennes”, Pg. 157, Anne Sebba) I thought about making a list of “What happened to the Nazi leaders of Occupied France?” but first of all, I think any rendering of information should not tell the reader everything there is to know about a topic. It should tell them as much as necessary to ignite in them an interest to further research such facts on their own so that they might also be learners, not just readers. And also given the two groups, it is the collaborators, not the occupiers, with whom I identify the most. Of course, as free citizens ourselves, there is a prima facie case for most of us to identify with the resistors. But in the words of Anna Sebba, in her book, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation, “For some women, the choice involved little more than a decision to wear an outrageous hat or to walk out of a restaurant. For others it involved making a deal or a sexual exchange. But surviving in occupied Paris, for many women, demanded some sort of choice, some sort of decision, about how would they would accommodate living with the Germans. It is not for the rest of us to judge but, with imagination, we can begin to try to understand.”

I would hope that I would have the courage of Violet Szabo, Toquette or Sumner Jackson, or any number of mothers, daughters, wives, husbands, or fathers who gave their all to protect their children and their countries for the cause of freedom. Perhaps we don’t know for certain what our reaction would be when faced with torture or starvation, but it is still a relevant question today for all of us to ask ourselves, “What would I have done?” And “What would I do?” The answer is not clear until we are surely tested in that way. But here’s a thought: Nowadays in the relative comfort and peace of our American homes, we are tested other ways with this same question. When my children act a certain way that is unloving, hateful, cowardly, what shall I do? When I am faced with an opportunity to forgive or to be bitter, what shall I do? When my child is faced with the opportunity to take a stand for justice, what will their decision be based on the model I have shown them? What will their decision be indeed? What will I do in any number of relationship situations where I have the opportunity to exert influence, assistance, or hope? What are our choices in those instances? If nothing else, the answer to that reveals perhaps a little about what our choices might have been had we been an American or a Frenchman in occupied Paris.

This list of occupied Paris collaborators and their ends is a tiny tiny portion of all the information and record that is out there. Please continue to search out new facts and new stories. Remembering those, who today we literally must thank for our freedom, is a small task for us compared to the gargantuan task that they faced every single day of that tumultuous occupation. Winston Churchill’s words for the pilots of the RAF during the Great Battle of Britain, ring true here as well. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

**Nothing in this blog is intended to reflect the views or opinions of any person or entity other than the author of this blog.

Keep Your Eye On The Prize

Who Am I?

I am a high energy doer, spouse of a pilot, and mother of 3 young women. I have a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice and a Masters in Public Administration. I am a strong believer in the power of the pen, compassion, and generosity. I believe that positive parenting can raise world changers and therefore, change the world. Most importantly, I am a Jesus follower.